Gaza, day 18: The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, reiterates his call for a ceasefire while northern Israel comes under fire from Lebanon and a strike hits a cemetery in Gaza City Link to this video The number of Palestinians killed by Israel's offensive in Gaza climbed above 1,000 yesterday, despite repeated calls from the UN for a halt to the conflict.

With mounting concern about the hundreds of civilians killed, nine Israeli human rights groups wrote to their government warning of their "heavy suspicion ... of grave violations of international humanitarian law by military forces".

Among the sites hit yesterday was Sheikh Radwan cemetery. Thirty graves were destroyed, spreading rotting flesh over a wide area. The army said it was targeting a nearby weapons cache.

So far 1,010 Palestinians have died, including 315 children and 95 women, Dr Moawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza's medical emergency services, told the Guardian. The number of injured after 19 days of fighting stood at 4,700, he said. On the Israeli side, 13 people have died, among them three civilians, and four soldiers accidentally killed by their own troops.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which is based in Gaza and has field staff across the territory, believed at least 673 civilians had been killed - about two-thirds of the total. A more accurate count of civilian deaths is difficult, with journalists and international human rights observers banned from entering Gaza.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was in Cairo for talks to halt the fighting. "My call is for an immediate end to violence in Gaza, and then to the Israeli military offensive and a halt to rocket attacks by Hamas," he said. "It is intolerable that civilians bear the brunt of this conflict."

Yesterday John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian chief, told the security council: "The situation for the civilian population of Gaza is terrifying, and its psychological impact felt particularly by children and their parents, who feel helpless and unable to protect them."

He added that Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel violated international laws and must cease. "Yet any Israeli response must itself comply with international humanitarian law. Here, too, there is considerable and grave cause for concern."

The Israeli military pressed on with its offensive yesterday, striking 20 sites across Gaza, including what it said were rocket launching sites, three smuggling tunnels, several armed gunmen and five buildings storing weapons.

Yet despite the intense bombing and artillery, militant rocket fire from Gaza has continued every day since the war began. Yesterday at least 16 rockets were fired into southern Israel, some reaching as far as Be'er Sheva and Ashdod.

Separately, guerrillas in southern Lebanon fired rockets into northern Israel yesterday. There were no casualties. The Israeli military fired mortars back.

The nine Israeli human rights groups, which include B'Tselem, Gisha, Amnesty International's Israel section and Physicians for Human Rights, said accounts from Gaza showed the Israeli military was "making wanton use of lethal force" and called for a halt to attacks on civilians, access for civilians to escape the fighting, medical care for the injured, access for medical and rescue teams and the proper operation of electricity, water and sewage systems. Their unusually strong criticisms stand out in a country whose Jewish population at least has been united in extraordinarily strong support for the war in Gaza.

The desperate state of health facilities in Gaza was highlighted yesterday in the Lancet medical journal. Several mobile clinics and ambulances have been damaged by Israeli attacks, it notes, and at least six medical personnel killed. Hospitals and clinics have been forced to close. International law requires that all medical staff and facilities be protected at all times, even during armed conflict, said the Lancet. "Attacks on staff and facilities are serious violations of these laws," it said.

Many doctors are working 24-hour shifts, ambulances cannot be maintained and are breaking down, while hospital equipment, medicines and anaesthetics, beds and medical staff are all in short supply. Hospitals and clinics have had their electricity supplies cut and are relying on "fragile back-up generators".

Norwegian doctors Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse wrote that during their spell working in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in the current conflict they had "witnessed the most horrific war injuries in men, women and children of all ages in numbers almost too large to comprehend. The wounded, dying and dead have streamed into the overcrowded hospital in endless convoys of ambulances and private cars and wrapped in blankets in the caring arms of others. The endless and intense bombardments from Israeli air, ground and naval forces have missed no targets, not even the hospital."

Two Palestinian journalists working for an Iranian television station were charged in Israel yesterday with passing classified information to the enemy. They were accused of reporting the start of the ground invasion two weeks ago while the information was still under military censorship, and could face lengthy jail terms.

A most shocking report against the Israeli Military Forces currently
exterminating the Palestinian peoples in Gaza states that Norwegian doctors
have turned over evidence to the United Nations showing that IDF Troops have
&#8216;stomped' the heads of at least 18 Arab babies causing immediate death due
to the &#8216;ejection of mass brain matter'.

One of these Arab babies brutally stomped to death [pictured 2nd photo left]
was reported to be one-and-a-half years old and upon his skull being crushed
so that his brain matter expelled, the Israeli soldier were reported to have
&#8216;screamed with delight' that this babies death was &#8216;one less vermin we'll
have to fight in the future'.

So senseless to the human mind have the Israeli atrocities against the
Palestinian become that the United Nations Human Rights Council has
scheduled an emergency meeting in yet another attempt to stop the mass death
of women and children by Israeli forces, and the Vatican's justice and peace
minister, Cardinal Renato Martino, has issued a warning to the World that
Israel has turned Gaza into a &#8216;Nazi concentration camp'.

London's Times News Service is further reporting that: "The International
Committee of the Red Cross has accused the Israeli military of
"unacceptable" conduct and breaching international humanitarian law after
discovering four emaciated children living next to the corpses of their
mothers and other adults in bomb-shattered houses in Gaza City.

The ICRC said that it had spent four days seeking Israeli guarantees of safe
passage so that it could gain access to the houses in the badly damaged
Zaytun neighbourhood of the city. It was finally allowed to send in a rescue
team and four Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulances yesterday afternoon
and said today that what they found was shocking.

In one house they discovered four small children, alive but too weak to
stand, next to the bodies of their dead mothers. In all their were 12 dead
bodies lying on mattresses.

In another house they found 15 survivors of the Israeli bombardment, several
of them wounded, and in a third, three corpses. At that point they were
ordered to leave by Israeli soldiers manning a post some 80 metres away, but
they refused to do so."

Israeli government reaction to the growing Global outrage over the
atrocities being committed by their soldiers continues to be indifferent,
and as we had previously stated in our January 5th report, "Israeli &#8216;Sound
Bombs' Reported &#8216;Exploding' Wombs Of Pregnant Palestinian Woman And Girls":

"Top diplomatic officials said that even if the Security Council does
approve a resolution that conflicts with Israel's interests in its next
meeting, "it's no big deal", and certainly will not interfere with the
continuation of Israel's operation."

Sadly, the American people are remaining silent about this brutal carnage
even though it is their aircraft, tanks, artillery and bombs that are
catastrophically destroying the Palestinian peoples and that they have given
freely to the Israelis at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Fortunately though, this cannot be said about the rest of the World in which
in the past day alone has seen:

India's Prime Minister Singh has stated his Nations "unstinted and
unwavering support to the just cause of Palestinians" and urged and end to
the slaughter.

Top advisor to Brazilian President Lula, Marco Aurelio Garcia, has called
the Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip "state terrorism".

Lawmakers in Ecuador condemning Israel's military offensive in the Gaza
Strip and calling for a global probe of Israel's alleged "crimes against
humanity."

And Venezuela expelled Israel's ambassador in Caracas to protest the
offensive in Gaza, a move came just hours after President Hugo Chavez called
the attacks a "holocaust".

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has further warned that, "What our
people in Gaza are facing is a humanitarian catastrophe. It's a new Nakba,
of a kind that has not happened since 1949".

But, to Israel's cruel response to the World's outrage over their barbaric
actions we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service:

"The United Nations halted aid deliveries to the besieged Gaza Strip on
Thursday, citing Israeli attacks on its staff and installations hours after
it said tank fire killed one of its drivers as he went to pick up a
shipment.

The United Nations has already demanded an investigation into Israel's
shelling of a U.N. school in Gaza that killed nearly 40 people earlier this
week. Israel and residents said militants were operating in the area at the
time."

Of all of these horrible events, however, the most important lesson of all
that cannot be forgotten about these atrocities allowed to occur in our
present &#8216;modern day' World, the demonization by the West of all of the
Muslim peoples on our Earth has succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, even
to the point where helpless Arab babies being stomped to death by Israeli
soldiers evokes no emotion at all from the American people who smugly call
themselves our Earth's champions of human rights.

But, and perhaps, the simplest description of these peoples was made by
George Orwell, who is considered "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler
of English culture", and who said: "The nationalist not only does not
disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable
capacity for not even hearing about them."

And with these sad words I write about the wanton destruction of so many
innocents, the most assured thing about them is that they won't even be
heard by those who need to hear them most.